Life out of London

This morning I'm waking up in Evershot - specifically at the Acorn Inn, or 'The Sow and Acorn' as Hardy referred to it in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It has a skittle alley out the back, and all manner and means of obscure pub games at which, after sufficient ale and port, I found it all too easy to lose last night.

I can hear wood pigeons, I can see nothing but trees, frost and the occasional Land Rover, and I can smell wood-smoke and the beginnings of a full English breakfast.

It's amazingly beautiful, and despite the fact that it's sub-zero outside, I'm enjoying having the window open - thus allowing the fresh smells of a country winter morning to permeate the smell of morning bed.

Nice.

I've spent the last few days in the Llyn Peninsular where Next Door Kate, Next Door Graeme and Creative Director Craig (CDC) and I rented an old Welsh long house for Christmas. We climbed Snowdon on Boxing Day, cooked every meal from scratch (apart from yesterday's Little Chef breakfast en route, which, I can assure you, remains a vile and fetid place), and tried to learn phrases in Welsh  - necessary in a place where over 3/4 of the locals have Welsh as a first language.

The complete obverse of my life in London. Not really that far away, but really very different.

Demand for Planning

In my career as a planner to date, a large chunk of time has been spent explaining to the rest of the agency what it is we actually do. This tends to fall on a mixture of deaf ears (the majority), those who reckon their clients could be persuaded to buy what we do (minority #1), and those who really don't want to have what they've always done questioned in any way (minority #2).

Put simply, as a department we've had to stimulate demand in the face of apathy - after all, why would anyone want to change (the other rude 'C' word) the way they work, even if it's for the better?

So on moving to my new agency, my over-riding pleasure so far has been in witnessing the sheer demand for planning on the part of both clients and agency staff.

Why?

Because they actively want to do new stuff but don't know what new stuff they should be doing.

And that's exactly what the planning function is (or at least one of the many definitions that I like). Namely: giving people confidence and inspiration to do something different.

This might be about using new media, talking to new audiences, talking about a different part of your product or brand. But in each case, the discipline of Planning should be there to make the strategic case - a bit like a barrister - drawing on available evidence and logical extrapolation - for making this change.

This isn't to say that Planning is required in every campaign for every client. Far from it. Many teams working on many clients know what needs to be done and it's frankly rude to suggest they don't. But if you trust the people you work with - and you've done a good job in showing them what Planning can do when they need it - they'll actively want to ask for it when necessary.

Here endeth, etc. etc.

But bloody well done to Michel, whose large shoes I'm now stepping into, for getting things to this point.

Bringing it all together

Creative Director Craig came round for tea yesterday, and in between comparing hangovers and deciding which meats we'd roast in Wales during our Christmas holiday, we discussed how we've got to the stage where our disparate bits of digital activity need to be brought together.

I've now managed to update my Facebook status via Twitter via text via my mobile phone. My next step is to bring excerpts from this blog onto my Facebook wall so as to surprise and delight anyone who stumbles upon me with the sheer brilliance of the machinations of my mind. 

This afternoon I plan to see if I can synch Flickr and Facebook, possibly add in my del.icio.us tags and see what else I can achieve.

I've already put Facebook on Netvibes, and I'm trying to work out whether there's any merit or indeed possibility of linking Netvibes with iGoogle - or whether you have to choose one or another. 

Why?

Well, following on from my last post, it's become clear to me that I have far too many forms of communication - and they need to be tidied up. And the splendid thing about this open source nonsense is that most net brands can now speak to each other. 

My devices are converging, my communications brands are converging, and it's a face off between Facebook and a couple of other amalgamation tools to decide which one will win. 

Or maybe I'll just get it down to two. Even that would be acceptable.

Or maybe I should bin it all and pick up a quill pen and some parchment from Woolies or a Post Office branch before they shut down completely.

Your digital home

William Morris, of wallpaper fame, once advised: 'have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful' ... and it strikes me, having set the strategy for several websites, many microsites and countless other bits of digital furniture, that this could be a pretty useful maxim to bear in mind when embarking on any piece of digital marketing.

Increasingly the digital savvy among us are personalising our digital experiences - the very word 'homepage' suggests a place from which you usually start or to which you often return. iGoogle allows us to determine what we place on this page; our toolbars, Digg pages, Evernote accounts, suites of iPhone applications and so on leave it entirely up to us to populate them with what we find useful or amusing.

The sites that I regularly go to are either useful (BBC News, Gmail, eBay, Streetmap, Wikipedia etc.) or enrich my experience in a beauteous or fun way (Flickr, b3ta, Holy Moly). 

I would not bother going to - or at least frequenting - a site that didn't do either of these things. Yet my clients frequently give me briefs that, on the face of it, require me to communicate such boringly self-serving factoids, thoughts and opinions  - digital junk mail - that the question 'why would anyone care?' invariably pops up.

We can all opt in or opt out of digital environments in split seconds, and unless digital marketing gives us something to put in our homes that is either useful of beautiful, it won't really be asked in.

Look up

Looking out of the train by Vauxhall station this morning I could just about make out the BT Tower, which looms large next to the building in which I work (for today and tomorrow, anyway). It reminded me of this picture I took a week or so ago while wandering about Fitzrovia with my esteemed (now former) colleague Brian. 

Amazing what you can see when you look up. 

I blogged a while back about the fact you rarely appreciate the full height of buildings when walking about town - or what's going on above eye level. Naturally, we tend to focus on where we're going rather than bump into things.

But I wonder ... more and more people are checking their mobile phones as they walk around, and more and more people are getting smartphones. One of the coolest features on the iPhone seems to be the geo-location application that can tell you where you are and where you want to go.

Maybe someone could invent a similar application that advised you when it would be ocularly rewarding to look up. 

City lifespans

Damn. It's been an entire week sans blogpost. Longer than I'd hoped to go without comment, but in the heady whirl that is disentanglement from one workplace and the gentle process of 'ramping up' (as wanky execs might say) with the next, I've neglected these words and pictures.

Yesterday I was in Paris for a day - 3am get up and a 9pm return, but just about do-able at a push. Bloody freezing it was too, but lovely nonetheless to visit the scene of many youthful crimes committed by me and the other university friends I was there with.

Every time I go there I forget that bit more: I had to catch a cab from the Gare du Nord to Opera, for instance, whereas I'd have enjoyed the familiar walk a few years back. Even from the cab the streets looked different, and emerged from each other at angles I wasn't expecting. So much for the logic of Hausmann's town planning, thought I, despite the resultant elegance.

But what a vision that guy must have had. Having spent the last year working on my Dubai client, whose passions for creating radical new islands and cities are world-(in)famous (see above pictures of the building of Palm Jebel Ali and the rebuildng of Paris), I've witnessed at first hand the effort that goes into restructuring communities.

Admittedly, my client has famously had GPS guided assistance in their endeavours, but the aim of both Hausmann and HH Sheikh Mohammed was similar: to re-create a city so that it's fit for the time that it has to serve - with all the attendant infra-structural challenges. 

Is it time for London to be radically restructured?

Death of creative

True creative is no longer an option for branded advertising.

Stuff that makes you go 'wow, that's really arresting. I want some'.

There are too many restrictions. Too much lily-livered law.

We either go unbranded or we leave it to others.

Or we make more drumming Gorillas - and that takes a huge leap of faith.

So most brands just join the dull bandwagon and continue to carp on about stuff that's safe but ultimately goes unnoticed. No-one ever got sacked, but no-one got promoted either.

Information is everywhere - it's the brand's job to pull reassuringly disparate voices together. 

Content is cheap, but the trick is to find the right content that works on your behalf. 

Creativity is now about editing, sourcing this content (viz. the incipient rise of media agencies), and facilitating ... inspiring those beyond the rule of law be creative for you.

Or just being plain silly (see last post).

Just some very initial thoughts. 

I have no conclusion yet.

Stuff that really doesn't matter

So I read today on BBC news that Britney Spears gets more web searches than Obama. And, normally, if you look down the 'most emailed' and 'most read' lists on the same site, there is a rather large number of these articles about stuff that really doesn't matter or doesn't matter that much - snow in Yorkshire, and some utter toss related to X-Factor.

My mother has long enjoyed the phrase: nothing matters much, and in the end, nothing matters at all.

Jonathan Spooner, a former colleague and creative mind of some note, spoke frequently of his need for 'a holiday from the self'. Or a good excuse to enjoy an alternate reality, which he did frequently with great success.

It has long been noted that FT-reading city boys, however many are now left, take to reading a copy of The Sun within the shelter of the former's pink pages.

And so, it would seem, that we have a desire for silliness - and that the web is a great breeding ground for silliness.

My question, or point of current pondering, is how a planner - the supposed doyen of logic within a creative agency - should write strategies and creative briefs that allow for silliness to flourish. 

Because if we don't, we're missing a trick.

Strength of feeling

I confess to reading the Metro paper on a worryingly regular basis. There's no real journalism going on there - it's a 'straight from the wires' approach at best - but just occasionally it imparts something of use.

And that thing of use, today, was a reminder that it's the time of year when The World's Strongest Man competition returns to our televisions. 

Brilliant, thought I, another opportunity (along with Eastenders, to which I'm peculiarly addicted) to stare blankly at the screen and turn my brain to standby. But, this being a more digital world than it was last year, I wondered what the website would look like. Lots of opportunity here, thought I again, to do something quite fun and creative.

I didn't get past the search results. 

Quite simply because I was intrigued that the 'world's strongest man' was eclipsed in terms of number of search results (as you'll see above) by 'world's strongest dog'. Even 'world's strongest redneck' wasn't far behind. 

Can anyone tell me why there are so many results for 'world's strongest dog'?

Shibboleths

Malcolm Gladwell's lecture on Monday night about culture - and how it can define our behaviours to the point of irrationality - has made me think about shibboleths.

Shibboleths are the practices that identify us as being of a particular background, and the word itself is a kind of discriminator between those who know what it means, and those who don't.

Walking past the golden arches on Tottenham Court Road a few moments ago, it occurred to me that I've never seen anyone in our agency eat a McDonalds for lunch. This is something that people in our profession, location and mindset just don't do.  

A shibboleth in absentia, as it were.

Just to prove a point

So this is If Wen

Digital done beautifully

Trawling through Facebook this Saturday morning (ok, not the way I expected my life to pan out) I came across a band called Revere. The keyboard player is one Nick Hirst, with whom I briefly used to work. 

Their music is stunning - and the above video truly original and beautiful. 

They have massive following on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and all the usual social networking sites. You can become fans, friends, comment on their work, link to iTunes and buy their singles, see photos, videos and reviews of their gigs ... in short, their digital presence is incredibly well thought out.

What makes it great? Well, I've spent the last hour discovering things about them in lots of different places, from lots of different points of view. I know now that they're pretty well respected by professional and amateur musos alike. I've got to know their backstory in a short space of time, I've noted the date of their next gig - and it's so far resulted in my buying their EPs and thoroughly enjoying them.

From zero to sales conversion in 60 minutes, to put it clinically.

And now I'm blogging about them - so technically I'm now an advocate, to use yet more nasty marketing terms. 

Nothing - apart from the cost of producing the music itself - would have cost them any money, I'm guessing. What they've done is reach out to people they know, make it easy for people to discover and link back to them, and - hey presto - with a good product, the network grows and facilitates its further growth.

And I have an enjoyable Saturday morning's exploration as a result. 

I know this is the sort of stuff we recommend to our clients on a regular basis, but most of them never bloody do it so it's a pleasure to see it working so well.

It's not only cream that floats to the top

If you look at the above screengrab, you'll see that there's a little green arrow next to 'Bullshit'. This is because it used to be below 'Horse Shit' when I initially searched for 'horse shit', but thanks to the good burghers of Googleville I can now promote certain items in my search engine results so that they'll always rise to the top should I wish to search for them again using that search term.

A number of people at the agency today reckon this is pretty cool, with comparisons being made to Digg and other customisable search/sort/save tools. The commentators at the BBC, on the other hand, reckon it's only going to appeal to seasoned surfers who have got more than a touch of binary OCD.

Personally, I reckon I'll use it very occasionally if something I looked for wasn't on the first page - and assuming I have sufficient forward-thoughtfulness to realise I may wish to find it again. Especially if my browser toolbar is o'erflowing with bookmarks or I can't be arsed to tag something to del.icio.us. And assuming I'm likely to remember the same search terms.

Thing is, despite working for a digital agency, I just can't get that excited about it. Sure, it's a nice extra and possibly based on a valid insight into how a very few people currently use search, but the vast majority of people really won't give a stuff. 

I doubt my sister will. I know my mother won't. Most of my old schoolfriends who gave London life the bodyswerve to have kids at an early age a few metres from where they themselves grew up - well they probably won't either. 

And there's quite a few of them. Loads, in fact.

So although it may well get a small coterie of tech-obsessed weirdy-beardies foaming at the whatnot, we'd do well to put it in perspective.

By demagoguery I mean ... Ochlocracy

The Ever-Splendid-Silvia brought this sketch to my attention a few years back and it continues to be a favourite of mine. Fry is at his very best, wielding language to devastatingly hilarious effect. 

There's one bit where Laurie questions Fry, saying: 'By demagoguery you mean...?' to which Fry replies: 'By demagoguery I mean ... demagoguery'. 

You have to see it to appreciate it.

But what a terribly splendid word it is, and it's also closely related to another Greek word 'ochlocracy' - meaning a form of ruling by the masses, the power of passion over reason, a form of mob rule.

And it just struck me that, on reading the BBC news front page today, this is what John Sergeant was trying to avoid by quitting Strictly. And these are the flames that The Sun is fanning by erecting a headstone for 'Baby P' in the crematorium. And the same reason that mothers in Portsmouth threw bricks through the windows of paediatricians thinking they were paedophiles a few years back. 

Not to mention that Diana woman.

But I suppose that because both these words come from Greek, and a long time ago at that, we're not exactly looking at a new phenomenon.

You don't write, you don't call...

See the last date of this 'Tweet'? It's the 5th of November.

That's a fortnight ago.

If you go to Obama's Twitter page you'll read that the President-Elect has decided to use Twitter to update you on news and stuff from the White House.

Only ... he's kind of forgotten to do that now he's won.

Hmm. Should we feel used? Has he stopped caring? He certainly used social media in a phenomenal way to get elected, but in my opinion, this is when things get interesting.

Which probably explains why he's stopped posting any thoughts.

Nothing to get in a flap about

According to Wired Magazine this month, blogging is dead and long live Twitter. Apparently, bloggers can no longer penetrate the armies of professional writers clogging up blogosphere to make their points heard.

Of course, this presupposes that the sole intent of bloggers is to be heard by the many rather than the select few, but - in order to work out how these two communications tools - I did a little desktop research...

What I found - using the approach I'm assuming that Wired used of seeing what floats to the top of Google - was that Twitter results have been dominated by the Obama campaign (second result - and a feat in itself).  Then, aside from the regulation Wiki entry and branded Twitter site, there was a new article about a group of mums who were ranting about a new painkiller ad on TV. 

I followed the links through to the 'tweets' and found that the majority of them posted a URL in the tweet itself. So Twitter was being used the tip of the iceberg - a way of flagging up a brief thought that links to a longer piece.

I wondered whether people did likewise for things more mundane and found that, sure enough, people were using Twitter to link to blogs and news articles about Vauxhall Astras too. 

Yikes.

Could it be that blogging is, in fact, not dead but in fact has a new form of publicity?

Opting for the backwaters

I hate these sunglasses. 

They're bling, they're brash, and they scream the brand at you. In Essex, Estonia and beyond, they are beloved of people trying to prove that they're hip or wealthy (or both), and in some onlookers' eyes I suppose they must succeed. They're a shortcut to a desired success signal - I've made it, and just in case you don't believe me I'm going to shout about it.

Many of my clients are keen on getting their logo and brand livery up front in everything they do, say or create - just in case anyone misses them and their efforts 'go to waste'.

But this is, in my opinion, wrong-headed.

There's far more merit in being in the subtle backwaters. There's nothing more flattering than when someone compliments you on an item of clothing and asks where it's from. The quality shines through, and allows you and the brand to bask in the reflected glory of a good choice.

Put your brand paraphernalia to one side, focus on doing genuinely useful stuff, and your rewards will be that much greater.

Punch in the face

I can't remember how the quotation goes exactly, but it's something like: if people spoke to each other the way that advertising speaks to them, they'd punch each other in the face.

Well, I nearly punched this VW digital offering in the virtual face: www.vwinnovatie.nl/en

The concept is simple enough - helping people to get to grips with the VW's new features by inviting them to guide a hapless video character through his various driving predicaments and apply the relevant feature. 

Initially, I quite liked it. But they ran out of juice very quickly ...

I don't really need to be congratulated for selecting 'parking assist' when he's having trouble parking, or 'satnav' when he can't find where he's going. They're pretty bloody obvious.

And then ... AND THEN ... to be told at the end that I 'truly am as clever as a Volkswagen' made me want to poke whichever bastard copywriter who wrote this right in the middle of the eye.

I own a Volkswagen - admittedly an aged one that's growing mould on the passenger footwell and has developed a mysterious dent in the tailgate - but it put me right off the brand.

For a moment.

And then I remembered that it's only advertising and so felt immediately well again.

In praise of a photo blog

Maybe it's because I like photography, maybe it's because I like talking tripe about marketing, or maybe it's because I'm a Londoner ... that I really like this piece of marketing from Samsung, thanks to it being discussed in the pub last night by Next-Door-Kate.

This site - www.thephotographicadventuresofnickturpin.com - is a collection of (ultimately) 28 photos, one per day, that street photographer Nick Turpin is taking with the Samsung Pixon camera phone. The twist is that, each day, visitors to the site can click on the bit of the photo that they'd like to be the subject of the following day's photo - and then Nick has to travel to the place in the world he reckons he'll be able to find that subject matter.

There are many reasons why I like this site, but here are my top 5:

- It stars the product itself, which is a pretty good demo;

- It's a neat idea that has a set time span and so should remain fresh;

- Nick seems genuinely interested in this project (it doesn't feel too staged);

- It taps into an emotional interest in an art form that will, in turn, genuinely appeal to the right kind of audience;

- It got Kate talking about it in the pub last night, and me blogging about it now.

To take this further, I know from my clever statistical machine that my blog gets around 20 hits a day. Sometimes even reaching the dizzy heights of 40. So there's a pretty good example of 'word of mouth' / 'word of mouse' / digital brand advocacy at work. In addition to the traffic on the site itself. And for free. 

OK, so you'd need to extrapolate these numbers to make any real difference, but it's not beyond the realms of imagination that this could be a talking point among other people. 

Nice one Samsung, and whichever agency did it. 

On puns...

As a planner, I'm well aware that 50% of my time is spent genuinely planning for the future. Coming up with a strategy that will, in some form, and with various colours and strings of words, then be implemented and hit the desired spot. 

Then there's the other 50% of the time that is spent coming up with a retrospective set of reasons that justifies an idea that's come out of the blue, but kind of feels right.

But occasionally, as the avian marketing example above shows, it's unlikely that my humble strategic endeavours - in either chronological direction - could ever help a piece of marketing 'snap to' a strategy.

But I love it nonetheless. A duck bearing a pun in a clothes shop in Chiswick, pointing you in its own inimitably beaky way towards a website.

Words from the real world

One of the words of the moment in marketing is 'engagement'. Specifically, 'consumer engagement'. What companies mean is that they want to get people to like them, to talk to them, to do things for them - oh, and to keep buying their products.

But it's a word that annoys me. For all our talk of understanding people, of one-to-one communication, too much chat is still around 'how do we engage people'. 

Sure, at a very high level, before we've worked out what people might possibly be interested in if we were to approach them in some way, I reckon you can just about get away with using it. But when you see the word in consumer-facing sites like the new Cadbury's Corporate Social Responsibility (SCR) website, pictured above, it smacks of copy that's been written by a bloke in a suit in a lofty office with no real idea of how people talk to each other.

'We've always been a company people engage with, and that engages with people.'

What the fuck?

I don't engage my friends: I talk to them, call them, listen to them, buy them drinks, laugh with them, at them, or smile grudgingly while they laugh at me.

Please, Cadbury, I can see what you're trying to do, but - for me at least - what promises so much in its name ('Dear Cadbury') and uses a host of pretty colours (despite questionable site architecture),  lets itself down in how it actually conducts itself.

The world is just a great big, er, archive

Now I don't want to sound like a designer from IKEA, but storing things in an effective manner is surely important. Google may tell us that the world is now about searching rather than sorting, but things have to sit somewhere.

Where they end up sitting can tell us something notable about who's doing the storing.

For instance, I wasn't going to write today's blog entry about this ostensibly rather tawdry subject, but I was struck when looking on Google Images for a piece of advertising by BP that at least half of the results showed images that came from people's blogs. See today's picture for a little bit of evidence.

My hypothesis is that the individuals who are now documenting the goings on around the world - verbally and visually - are collectively providing us with one of the richest archives. And doing so possibly better than any one single professional archivist.

Our blogging and search tools have turned us into a giant library. And it just might be a rather useful one.

Ideas worth naming pubs after

Back from the Sandy Country, and going to work at our new office premises today. Now we're in the same building as Saatchi and Saatchi, and there's a pub in the central quadrangle called 'The Pregnant Man' in memory of one of Saatchi's most memorable ads.

A brilliantly simple idea based on a powerful insight - and quite frankly a benchmark that so few pieces of advertising, marketing, communication - call it what you will - actually hit these days*. We're getting too obsessed with the medium, the technology and the speed of turnaround to come up with ideas that continue to resonate years down the line.

I'm hoping that the new location, the heritage, the shiny new desks and White Company liquid soap in the wash basins will spur us into coming up with ideas that, in years to come, will be worth naming pubs after.

*Thereby rendering me an old git.

Piece of cake

One of my favourite jokes is: 'How do you get a fat girl into bed? Piece of cake...'.

Cake turned out to be a funny thing once again during our dining escapades in Dubai. We discovered that if you book a table and say that it's somebody's birthday, then you get a free cake for pudding.

I've now celebrated 3 birthdays in just under 2 weeks. I should now be 35 years old. Aside from the embarrassment of having the staff sing to you, it's a very cheap way of getting a dessert.

Gods at odds

Re-reading some of Richard Dawkins' tomes on the subject of the rank outside chance of there being a higher being, and stumbled across a clever little logic rhyme that shows the Big Beardy Man to be rather at odds with himself:

Can omniscient God, who

Knows the future, find

The omnipotence to

Change His future mind?

(Karen Owens)

So if you're big, clever (and beardy) enough to know what's going to happen in the future, that's one thing. But if you're powerful enough to change anything you want, then how about changing the future? But if you're able to change it, can you really claim that you know it as you would know a fixed thing - or is omniscience only about the here and now?

Anyway, possibly a dodgy choice of literature out here, where the phrase 'insha'Allah' (if God wills it) seems a rather too convenient excuse to try and alter your own destiny - or at least a rather too frequently used excuse for the omnipresent traffic problems and one's own associated and projected tardiness to meetings.

And speaking about knowing the future and not being able to affect it, I'm going to try and squeeze in my first ever skiing lesson at the above indoor slope on Thursday. Once I'm in motion, my biggest fear is not being able to stop. So on seeing a tree, a slalom post, or in this case probably a shop selling bling stuff, I'd simply cruise towards an inevitable and painful interface.

A day on the Palm Jumeirah

This is a 30 ft waterslide from the top of a ziggurat, off which I threw myself today following nearly an hour's queuing. 

An hour of nervous anticipation, followed by 2 seconds of weightlessness, 3 seconds of fear that my contact lenses would be washed out, followed by sweet relief  and joining another queue for the 'Shark Attack' flume. 

This second flume takes you through a shark tank and you get to 'swim with the fishes'. Sounds pretty cool ... only problem being that the sharks are tiny, there's loads of reflections, and it doesn't last very long.

Aquaventure, the collective brand name for all these micro-experiences, probably only gets 4/10 in my book - a real shame, as the potential's all there.

Inside Atlantis is a massive fish tank, home to 'Sammy the Whale Shark'. There's a Facebook petition to have him released back into the wild, and you can sympathise with that, but I tell you - this fish tank is quite a spectacle.

And this is the Atlantis hotel itself. Thousands of bedrooms, including two underwater suites.

Wow.

Atlantis is situated at the end of the Palm Jumeirah, the first manmade Palm island in the world - and the first of three in Dubai. This is the little one, and will only be home to around 400,000 people. This is the view towards Atlantis as you drive up the central trunk of the Palm, next to the monorail which is just being finished off. Pretty futuristic stuff...

The Divide

Yesterday - Friday - is the Dubai equivalent of Saturday, and the expat community here has stumbled on the phenomenon of 'brunch' as an afternoon-long activity which involves limitless champagne. We went to Yalumba, which was where the infamous 'Sex on the beach' case kicked off.

I kid you not, for the three or four hours we were there, if our glasses were even down to an inch from the top, an army of Asian waiters would descend on us and top up the Tattinger. 

It's an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink example of gluttony writ large. I lost count of how many glasses of fizz I had, ditto the number of oysters, prawns, lobsters, slices of rare roast beef and sashimi that were presented to me. 

As the above picture shows, the result is not exactly pretty: the room is drunk by about 2pm, and it's at around this point that it struck me that there was a massive divide between the fat affluent expats and the incredibly dutiful - mostly Indian - waiting staff. 

Thankfully I didn't witness any flagrant displays of rudeness directed towards them on this occasion, but they are so good at looking after you that you can see how forms of racism can be almost institutionalised. Just the expectation that someone will pick up your napkin, pour your drink, do this, do that - it's not good. Too many hints of a nascent apartheid.

But it's what Dubai is built on - a massive underclass of underpaid Asian workers who work 24/7  building the hotels for expats to get pissed in. 

It's not something I like about this place.

The things we actually remember

Steven, Nick (pictured left) and I went to a rather swanky steak restaurant last night. A far cry from the green velour banquettes of Aberdeen Angus fame, this place was opulently designed and the steaks themselves were drool-inducing. Even now.

But I'll remember it most for the HUGE PEPPER GRINDERS.

You couldn't nick one of these if you tried. And believe me we came up with some rather unsavoury liberation strategies.

It made me wonder if some marketing genius deliberately came up with the idea that, in a city that's increasingly resplendent with high-end looky-likey restaurants, this one needs an easy way of remembering it.

A single object. A single thought. A single trigger. A 'shall we go to that steak restaurant that has the fucking great pepper grinders again tonight, dear?' type idea.

Or maybe it was just chance. In which case I'm going to nick the thought (in the absence of the grinder itself) and use it as my own.

Bring me something that's not obvious

So I'm out in Dubai on a fact-finding mission. Learning about man-made islands the size of Paris that have been built on the coast of the country in the searing heat. The largest ones ever built. Together they'll practically treble the population of this tiny Gulf Emirate in the next seven years.

Jeeeeeesus. Or, indeed, Allah.

I have to drive past the world's tallest tower to get to my client's offices. 

Then past the world's only 7-star hotel (ok, it's self-awarded).

Then past a socking great indoor ski-slope, boasting some species of dangerous run. Probably also a world first.

But today's most noticeable thing was the crowning glory of the Palm Jebel Ali island: a 'mini' island at the top of it in the shape of a big whale (see above picture). 

It's like something out of Vic and Bob, or the Mighty Boosh. 

An island in the shape of a whale. Yikes.

I'm not sure whether or not this eclipsed a series of mini pontoon islands around the edge of the same Palm island which, when viewed from the cruising height of a Boeing 747, together form stanzas from one of the Sheikh's own poems.

But what I do know is that I'm craving something subtle and worth pointing out. It's all so damn bling and obvious here that there's nothing really worth pointing out.

Out with the old

No picture today, as I need to be a bit circumspect.

This morning I went to meet one of the directors of a well established UK brand. It's been a bastion of the maritime transport industry for centuries, and the oil paintings, which you cannot fail to miss when you emerge from the office lift, scream history and heritage at you.

The reason we met with this gentleman was that his company has been bought by a massive Middle East construction operation, for whom we do a sizeable amount of digital work, and by whom his company and brand is about to be subsumed. 

We're tasked with managing the digital subsumption (is that a word?) project.

There was one very touching moment when I asked, gently, if I'd be right in thinking that his colleagues would be sad at this history being erased from their plot of cyberspace. His expression and the timbre of his voice immediately told me three things:

1. Yes, this was a sore point, and a genuinely emotional moment in their history;

2. We had established a connection - I was no longer solely on the side of the bastard subsumer (again, no idea of this word exists);

3. I knew now exactly how to approach the brief.

By contrast to the perfunctory introductory handshake, I received a warm and heartfelt farewell.

Not worth shouting about?

Eversholt Street NW1, where our agency's based in the old ticket office behind Euston Station, doesn't exude much life. As this photo shows, it's grey, grubby and full of shut-down shops, concrete walls and bits of barbed wire. 

Reminiscent of East Berlin.

As I wandered around today - perhaps for the last time before our agency moves to the glitzy Charlotte Street and as I head off to Dubai for a while - it struck me that while this area looks devoid of life or interest, this isn't really the case. There's plenty going on.

It's just that it's not deemed something to shout about.

At least two brothels, a gender-change clinic, porn shops, betting shops, a strip club, funeral directors ... none of these particularly big on window-dressing, but nonetheless managing to stay afloat while other shops close down and graveyard pubs change hands.

I wonder what the street would look like if it were given the same visual treatment as Charlotte Street.

The importance of your Praise-giver

Yesterday my mother said she enjoyed this blog. It's always heartwarming to receive compliments (there's a fine art to accepting them, although that's another story), especially from someone important in your life.

Talking later with Next Door Kate, she said that she remembers very well the first time her mother said she was proud of her, and how happy it made her feel. It was many years ago, but the sensation remains with her.

My former sailing partner and current mentor, Tony the Italian, noticed the importance of this while he was completing his course in counselling. And now, many of the people who seek his counselling services - he believes - have been denied praise from the most important person in their life. They're in a bit of a mess because this particular parent or hero has failed to acknowledge their achievement - no matter how many other people may give praise.

Tony is using his current degree to explore this hypothesis, and I'm looking forward to hearing his conclusions.

Hardy, on the art of noticing things

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
'He was a man who used to notice such things'?

- Thomas Hardy

(Thanks Mum).

Making the most of the real world

These are just a few of the cameras that I saw swirling round above Euston station as I went to M&S for a terribly healthy bean-based salad. I watched them, they watched me, and we were for a fleeting few seconds blissfully aware of each other.

I'd never noticed them before. Indeed, since succumbing to the blogging bug I've noticed a lot more things. I feel far more aware - partly, no doubt, because I've made a little pact with myself that I'm going to create and broadcast something on a regular basis. I now make time to 'look around me' and capture moments.

So a relationship I ostensibly have with my screen and keyboard has made me appreciate real-life stuff more acutely.

My most splendid friend Silvia, a writer and observer of some considerable merit, told me of a similar experience when she kept a journal. She awoke one morning to hear a cracking sound and, after a while trying to fathom what it was, discovered it was the daffodil on her windowsill casting aside its papery husk to reveal a new yellow flower.

Whimsical, but kinda beautiful. And amazing what you notice when you're on sensory alert.

The view from another infrastructure

I usually drive to work and am used to seeing London from the road. I look through my windscreen at the roofs of London from the elevated Westway, the ground floor exterior of roadside buildings through my passenger window, and* scores of kamikaze motorcyclists in my rear view mirror.

Pretty much the same view, everyday.

But yesterday, Next Door Kate and I cycled a mammoth 50km (sounds better than 31 miles) around the canal network of West London. 

And we saw London from a totally different perspective. 

We witnessed dozens of Eastern European workers relaxing with their friends and their fishing rods; we saw people living an almost bucolic existence next to water in the middle of the city;  we admired Goldfinger's Trellick Tower from beneath it (as opposed to in the distance from the aforementioned elevated section of the Westway), we smelt the food aromas from Hoo Hing Chinese wholesaler from an aquaduct over the North Circular, and we even chanced upon a girl sitting doing her knitting between a gigantic gas storage structure and a quaint looking canal boat.

We saw stuff from the perspective of a totally different transport infrastructure, and it's very different from roadside existence.

(* Please note the usage of the Oxford Comma.)

Waxing lyrical

Last night played host to a DraftFCB reunion at the Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden (beautiful olde worlde pub, although the Harvey's Best was off and the Adnams ... er ... questionable).

Spoke with Dom, copywriter and now doyen of the car waxing industry, having discovered the balls to set up 'Dodo Juice' - a funky independent enthusiasts' car care brand.

In his role as CEO, MD, FD, bottle-washer and chief marketer, he has to answer to no-one but his staff, and so pushing through marketing decisions is - by contrast to the job of most agencies - a piece of proverbial piss.

So it was with great ease that he called one of his new buffing mitts 'Mint Merkin'. No research needed because he's so familiar with his Max Power loving audiences that his work is also his hobby. Result? The name is an instant hit: well differentiated, buckets of attitude, and has garnered the eagle-eye interest of some larger, more established brands in the hot-rod polishing market.

Research is so often a waste of time. If it feels right, we should have the balls to JFDI more often. I've been in enough focus groups where my role demanded nothing more than the 'moderating of consensus'*. 

Which is utterly bloody pointless.

* OK Dargan, I'll credit you with that one...

The Tramp Ladder

I'm afraid I didn't capture the moment photographically in this case, but yesterday lunchtime I saw an exemplary instance of street-dweller fraternity: taking a well-earned few moments out from shouting at shadows and swigging Buckfast, one half of a trampish pair reached over to the other and blew his nose for him.

I've never done this for anyone. 

Dargan's Tramp Displacement  Theorem has for some time held as its postulate, in a Pythonesque way, that a hobo from Plaistow would be looked down upon by a Highgate vagrant. Each has his distinct manor, and each knows his place.

One may, therefore,  only indulge in an upwardly social scramble when a can of Tennants bearing an RIP sign is in evidence.

I am led to assume that this extraordinary act of nasal-seepage removal is actually the indication of a passing tramp king.

Restricted Joy

I discussed with my mother last weekend the topic of licensed opening hours. She opined that it was madness for drink to be available on trains first thing in the morning. I opined that if people wished to drink at that time then it was their choice, and why should anyone restrict them? 

Drink-fuelled train-rage continues, after all, to be rare.

But this website - Hotel626 - reminded me of the joy of being told: 'no, you can't have what you want right now. You'll have to wait'.

I still don't really know what's on the inside of this site, as Gabby-From-Creative only told me about it this morning, but I enjoyed what is probably an advertiser telling me that I can't do something.

I therefore wanted to do it. 

A refreshing change from the irksome 'why not do X Y or Z?' approach to marketing. 

I've got a thousand reasons why not, that's why.

So maybe mother does know best: restriction can be good for us.

Mail goggles!

At last! A service for inappropriate drunken messages. Gmail users can opt to take a simple maths test before sending a late night email to their boss / lover / ex-lover / etc.

Expect to see this sent to an inbox near you soon. Probably many times.

The Power of Relevance

I have no idea who Dagens Industri are, and I don't speak whichever weird-assed language this is, but I love the timeliness of this ad.

Sadly, according to one of today's BBC postings, many 'fat cat' bankers may well keep their jobs, undeservedly, as the government moves to stop the financial infrastructure on which we all depend from going under.

The gin meme

This poster is doing the rounds at the agency at the moment. In both physical, tangible form as well as on the web. One of our designers made it. The mere mention of the juniper spirit and the notion of 'gin eye' (i.e. looking splendidly, paralytically bog-eyed) are enough to have a good half-dozen people collapse in laughter in the room next to mine. 

It's a constant topic of conversation. Bottles adorn the creative department. 

It makes me laugh as well.

It's one of those things (what is it: a catchphrase? a state? a 'meme'?) that captures the imagination, is rooted in good observation, sparks hilarity and is probably what social commentators would call 'social currency'. 

More please.

The 'Law of Thirds'

I uploaded my Morocco holiday photos to Facebook last night, and my neighbour Kate reckoned this was the best of the bunch. 

As a creative-type, she regularly admonishes me for too many snaps that put things in the centre and instead taught me the law 'doing things in thirds' in photos.

All part of my training in become more visual and less word-based - which I reckon is increasingly important for planners in the digital marketing industry.

Kick off

I've finally succumbed to the temptations of blogdom. After months of working out what would ever motivate me to keep it up - and why anyone would bother reading it - I reached an epiphany. 

Possibly too grand a word to use in this case, but it arose from a question I asked myself in preparation for a meeting later today: what have I noticed today that's remained with me for a while - and for whatever reason?

So 'I noticed this' is born. 

It'd be rewarding to think that something grabs me occasionally - and if it grabs me then maybe it'll grab you. Doesn't matter why, and I'm not (always) going to pontificate on how.

But I need some rules. Keep it minimal. Keep it visual. Don't be a slave to it every day, but twice a day is also ok. Only post stuff that genuinely grabs my attention. Don't be another 'me too' commentator on advertising wank. Don't nick other ideas just to look cool.

So I'm just going to post stuff that I notice. 

Hope you like.